“While a majority of [US] parents with online teens [12-17] still believe the Internet is a beneficial factor in their children’s lives, there has been a decrease since 2004″ in the number of parents who believe so (67% then vs. 59% now), study author Alexandra Rankin Macgill reports. She adds, though, that there has not been a “corresponding increase” during the same period in the percentage of parents who see online activity as a bad thing (7% now vs. 5% then). “Instead, more parents are neutral about whether their children have been positively affected by the Internet, saying the Internet has not had an effect on their child one way or another [30% now vs. 25% then].” [“Now” should be qualified a bit, because the survey was conducted about a year ago.]

As for how we regulate our kids’ Internet use, interestingly, as with videogames and TV, we tend to do so in terms of the content of the medium more than time spent on it – 68% have rules about what sites their kids can use, compared to 77% concerning TV shows they can watch and 67% concerning videogames they can play. So we’re pretty engaged in their Net use – “despite the stereotype of the clueless parent,” Pew/Internet found. Some 65% of parents say they’ve checked where their kids have been after they’ve been online, and “74% can correctly identify” whether their children have created a social-networking profile others can see.

There’s a fairly predictable difference between teens’ favorable view of technology and that of parents, though the percentage of parents with a positive view is high: 71% of parents say the Internet and cellphones, iPods and digital cameras make their lives easier, compared to 89% of teens. I noted with interest that 63% of US 12-to-17-year-olds now have cellphones, compared to 89% of parents. For iPods and other music players, it’s the inverse: 51% of teens have them, compared to 29% of parents.

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

As a public service for parents, educators, and everyone interested in young people’s use of technology, NetFamilyNews is the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community. Founded in 1999, it has become the journal-of-record on all aspects of youth and technology, serving readers in more than 50 countries.
NFN is based on the premise that informed, engaged parenting is essential to kids’ constructive use of technology. With the advent of Web 2.0, or the social Web, that has never been truer. We all have arrived at the everywhere, all-the-time, multimedia, multidevice, downloadable and uploadable, user-driven Internet. On this Internet, the best protections our highly mobile Net users have is the filtering software in their heads and their informed, engaged parents. That’s why I started NetFamilyNews, a weekly email newsletter and almost daily blog.